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Oh deer! Animal makes a ruckus in PV Bicycle Shop

Nina Schutzman, Poughkeepsie Journal 5:34 a.m. EDT June 2, 2014

Authorities remove a deer from the pv Bicycle Shop on Saturday afternoon. The deer followed a teenage employee into the store and ran around for awhile before it was brought out.
(Photo:
Melissa Lawlor/Courtesy photo
)

You wouldn't think a deer would be interested in anything a bicycle store sells.

But one deer — a doe — came crashing into the pv Bicycle Shop on Saturday afternoon.

The deer followed 15-year-old Garrett Lawlor, an employee of the shop, into the store, said his mom, Melissa Lawlor.

The doe kicked her son in the "backs of his legs," Melissa Lawlor said. But "he's fine ... a couple of bruises."

Randy Tooker, manager of pv Bicycle, was sitting in the back room of the shop when he "heard a bunch of crashing and banging.

"I came out and it was running right at me," Tooker said of the deer. "You can't make this stuff up!"

He didn't make it up.

The Dutchess County Sheriff's Office and state police responded to the Pleasant Valley bike shop to handle the situation.

"A deer somehow got into the store, did damage, and then was removed by ... deputies," said Capt. John Watterson of the Sheriff's Office.

The damage, luckily, is more of a "mess" than anything else, Tooker said.

The deer was "having a hard time on the tile floor ... it ran right into the bathroom, it got locked (stuck) in there," the bike shop manager said. "There were bikes falling down. It was quite the fiasco."

A fiasco that Tooker watched unfold from the second floor of the shop. Running upstairs was his "defense" when he saw the deer running toward him.

"I got out of the way," he said.

The deer skidded around the shop and ended up in Tooker's starting place — the back room, what Tooker calls the tire room.

When authorities arrived, that's where the doe was.

"They kind of tied (her) up with a dog leash, and they carried" her out, Tooker said.

None of the bikes are damaged, he added. A mirror is broken, but the doe wasn't injured.

But her departure fit the pattern of weird behavior, Melissa Lawlor said.

"They take it around back to let it go," she said. "Instead of going into the woods, it went across (Route) 44 ... and jumped into the cemetery!"